At the Microsoft Management Summit in San Diego this week, however, Microsoft changed its tune and said that PowerShell will debut in Longhorn Server Beta 3, which is expected to go to testers in April. Jeffrey Snover, Windows Management Partner Architect and "father" of PowerShell, acknowledged the change in strategy on his blog on March 27.

"That's right, every version of Windows Server will ship with PowerShell!" Snover blogged "It's a pretty big day for us in the PowerShell world."

PowerShell is an environment "similar to the Korn, Bourne, or other shells on UNIX and Linux," as explained in an article in TechNet Magazine, "and a rich programming language like Perl or Ruby, combined with the functionality of the Microsoft .NET Framework."